It has one of my favourite record sleeves - a reproduction of Henri Fantin-Latour's painting "A Basket Of Roses", juxtaposed with Peter Saville's colour-block code in the top corner (which I still haven't learned to read). Like Saville I have my own colour-code to rate the songs I discuss on the blog, with pink being my absolute favourite songs of all time, through the spectrum to brown, which are the irredeemably worst songs of all time.
Age Of Consent - The album opener is the main reason I keep this on my shelf. It opens with a guitar part then adds drums, a second guitar part and bass before finally building up to the vocal line. Each of the parts is simple but they are so effective together. Age Of Consent sounds best when you're driving fast to match its speedy tempo - my favourite time to listen is to press play just as the bus is leaving the 30mph limit of the town and accelerating out into the countryside. However I'm always happy to hear it anywhere at any time of day, it brings me so much happiness. I love Bernard Sumner's guitar playing and the way he ferociously saws at chords, and I also love when his vocal breaks down to a series of yelps towards the end. I could not trust anyone who says they don't like this song; I find it difficult to think of one that I love more.
Rating: pink - truly, one of my all-time favourites.
We All Stand - The intro to this song gave me 80s detective movie vibes and then the lyric about having 3 miles to go and something about soldiers made me feel like I was trudging through some sort of deserted land to reach salvation. My favourite sound in this song is the bass drum which Stephen Morris thumps with all his might on the down beat. Unlike Age Of Consent, which moves around a lot within the boundaries of its simple riffs, this song doesn't really go anywhere and didn't hold my interest. It felt a bit like the band jamming and trying to find something and it went on a bit too long.
Rating: green.
The Village - This song starts with the sort of bouncy synths you might expect to hear from an early Depeche Mode record. It's the kind of song that I can imagine hearing in an 80s disco scene - it's bright and it has lyrics that sound like they're about love and happiness rather than disinterest. Bernard's vocals sound more off-key than usual, to the point that it's a little bit off-putting, but it's redeemed by the abrupt ending that came out of the blue.
Rating: green - I initially rated it blue when listening to the album but now that I'm writing this up I can't remember how it went so I've marked it down!
5 8 6 - We open with staccato synths which remind me of the brutalist style of bands like The Human League before they went pop - a real cold, warehouse on an industrial estate sound but with some good wobbles to make things a little bit weirder. Just when I was thinking I'd had enough of this style, the song breaks into a beat that's not dissimilar to Blue Monday, the most famous New Order song which appears on the American version of this album but not the original British cut. Like the previous number this is a dance song, but where The Village was bright, 5 8 6 is dark. It has a percussion breakdown in it which also sounds like Blue Monday - to be honest this whole song sounds like Blue Monday 2 but no part of it is as good. The most interesting bit is the way that everything slows down to a stop which sounds pretty cool now and I bet sounded even cooler back in 1983.
Rating: green - should've just put Blue Monday on the record.
Your Silent Face - Side 2 begins with the other song from this album that I know really well. I hadn't really thought about it before but listening to all of the parts it sounds like this song is entirely synthetic until the vocal line starts, and this seems like a good time to point out how underrated Gillian Gilbert is. As New Order's keyboard player she's the key component in making them stand apart from Joy Division and the moody post-punk bands of the scene they grew out of and I don't think she gets nearly enough credit for what she brings to the group. Another thought I had listening to your Silent Face is how much lyrics feel like an afterthought to this band - they're a necessary part to make it into a song but I can't usually find any meaning in them. I do like the "you've caught me at a bad time, so why don't you piss off?" at the end of the lyric sheet for this song, especially the way it turns from a sung line to a mumble. The synthesised strings in this either sit on the top as the main riff or hum as a bass part while guitars or keys or vocals take centre stage and both sound great. I especially like the long notes in the main string riff that I envision being stretched out like a good stringy piece of mozzarella. I've had complaints before about the outro being too long but I think it's just right, although maybe the subtle changes in the bass are lost on bad speakers.
Rating: blue
Ultraviolence - This one has Ants-style jungle drums and synth sounds that feel dated now, but a great bassline. I liked it but it's another song that went on too long and my mind started wandering.
Rating: green
Ecstasy - There are robotic vocals in this that sound ahead of their time, but this mostly just sounds like another jamming-in-the-studio piece that they couldn't be bothered to stick a lyric to. My mind wandered again but I was pondering where their song titles come from - I've never really noticed before that most New Order songs don't include their title in the lyrics. There's a synth trumpet sound in this song that definitely appears elsewhere in the New Order catalogue - is it part of Blue Monday?
Rating: yellow - my least favourite song on the record
Leave Me Alone - I really like both the guitar and vocal parts on this song; I think this is the closest we come to a real lyric that actually says something, and it's the only one to include the song title. Of all of the songs on Power, Corruption & Lies, this one sounds the most like Joy Division and has the least synth sounds. It ends with each of the instruments dropping out one at a time which is a really nice mirror to the beginning of Age Of Consent.
Rating: green
Power, Corruption & Lies is an album that doesn't live up to the expectation set by its first track, or by the only era-defining single that they didn't both to put on the album, but it's still a good album and one that I'll keep on my shelf and listen to on occasion. As I said at the start, my dad didn't buy any more of their albums and I think I agree with his assessment that they're a great singles band but maybe not one whose entire discography is brilliant. I'll leave you with Age Of Consent, the first song that's made it into my greatest-of-all-time list.
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